


the taste of red

by 2space_lesbo1



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man 2099
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Body Modification, Exhaustion, Experimental Style, Gen, Miguel and Gabriel are teenagers, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Non-consensual experimentation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, and the story is basically the same, but they're in highschool instead of adulthood lol, but with a twist lol, other characters to be added - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27727076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2space_lesbo1/pseuds/2space_lesbo1
Summary: Miguel didn't think helping Delgado with something as simple as a genetics machine would unravel this much shit into his life. Not like he already has to deal with a shitty life.
Relationships: Miguel O'Hara & Gabriel O'Hara
Kudos: 8





	the taste of red

**Author's Note:**

> I LOVE MIGUEL O'HARA AND I WISH THERE WERE MORE FICS OF HIM
> 
> he's so underrated right along with miles and it physically saddens and pains me ;-; 
> 
> but i suddenly got this idea to make miguel a teenage spider man along with peter and ive decided to run with it. i'm still gonna be writing miles fanfiction on the side, and i'll finish "find what makes you tic" eventually, but i had this idea and i wanted to write miguel since he hardly gets any attention lol
> 
> also, experimental style because i wanted to try something new for his pov. so it may be a bit strange, but i thought it fits his pov

Miguel O’hara liked to consider himself a regular, cut off the block teenager who is just trying to make his way through high school while also navigating his way through his family life at the same time. It was tedious balance, one he was proud to say he's gotten pretty good at, but sometimes days like this made it hard to. 

Reflecting back on how he ended up in a geneticist machine was particularly odd, and he still wasn't entirely sure how it happened in the first place, but because he was stuck in here(the lights were humming to life, the very air around him was vibrating) he was going to be late getting home and his parents weren't going to be happy with him. In fact, they were going to be pissed, and without him there when their anger starts to really boil over the surface, they'd take their frustrations out on each other, and more importantly, on Gabri. Which Miguel refused to let happen. He's kept Gabriel safe from the brunt of their parent’s angers and frustrations for a good ten years now, and he wasn't about to let the streak break. 

Gabriel didn't deserve it. 

But, he wasn't going to make any progress if he was stuck in this machine. 

“Hey, uh, Mr. Delgado?” Miguel called, looking towards the entrance to the machine. “I looked through the whole thing, and didn't find anything wrong with it. What did you say-?”

Instead of an answer from the man, however, the machine explodes with noise and lights and Miguel has to snap his mouth shut and slam his hands over his ears, eyes closing tightly to try and stave off the overwhelming senses. His body is being enveloped, then, by warmth and heat and pain pain pain pain-

He starts screaming at some point. He's not entirely sure when, but the sound ripe through his throat as his body is torn apart and put back together again. It doesn't feel right. Nothing feels right. His jaws are aching, his hands and feet are smarting horribly, his forearms are expanding and aching and his eyes are stinging. He grasps at his hair, fingernails digging into his scalp, drawing blood(or he thinks it's blood. something warm and wet started to drip down his scalp). 

It feels like he's in this state of agony forever, and yet for no time at all when his entire world is filled with an explosion of lights and colors and sounds. He's thrown to the ground, cold air hitting his suddenly bare skin(what happened to his clothes?) and the broken up ground cutting his sides. He groans, writhing on the ground much like a dying spider. He oddly felt like one, too. His arms and legs felt too long, his mouth felt too sore, his eyes felt too big. 

There is the sound of laughter nearby- Delgado. He was still here. He was laughing at Miguel’s situation. He was really getting tired of old men laughing at him when he was down. Why did the old men always feel the need to hit him? To kick him? He didn't know- maybe he was just cursed that way. 

“Yes! The brat is dead now!” Delgado exclaimed, even though Miguel was anything but dead. He was the opposite- he was too alive, too aware of everything. He could feel every pebble, every crack in the ground, he could smell every single scent on the air, he could see a whole new array of colors before his eyes, he could taste the wind. It was almost too much, and he had to make it stop somehow. His veins are thrumming, teeth and fingers itching for the feel blood, his tongue aching for the taste. He could hear an old man's heart thumping wildly nearby, working double time to pump blood throughout his huge and fat body. His chest rumbles with anticipation, his sore body moving on its own to a low, crouched position. He felt to be the hunter, the old man the unaware prey. “Now my son can be here, like he was supposed to be in the first place.” 

Miguel is launching from the ground, hands held out in front of him(his fingertips have talons on the edge, his lips are drawn back in a snarl to reveal pointed fangs that hadn't been there minutes before) and Delgado is screaming as he lands on the old man. “N- no! You're dead!” the old man protests despite the situation, and the sound of begging prey only eggs Miguel on. He bares his fangs, his talons breaking Delgado’s skin, causing the man to scream. “Monster! Monster! You're a monster!”

His fear, his words, tear into Miguel, and he stops, giving Delgado just enough time to kick him off. He hits the ground again, looking down at his hands, covered in blood(his chest was humming happily- he has the urge to lap the liquid from his fingers, to taste it and swallow it in gallons) and nearly breaks down then and there. Delgado is crying, sobbing, muttering fearfully at the sight of Miguel, gaze darting around desperately, finding a hole in the wall. Miguel’s eyes widen, even as the little light in the room burns his pupils. He knows what the old man was about to do. And instinct kicks in as the old man runs towards the edge, ready through himself over the edge, and Miguel darts after him, reaching for a wrist, for the hem of his shirt to pull him back up, to keep him from leaping off- 

But Delgado screams louder as he gets near, and throws himself off, terrified eyes on Miguel as he falls through the air. Miguel hits the edge, one of his hands hanging uselessly over the side as Delgado falls, seemingly in slow motion, until he disappears below the higher area of Nueva York. He was going to eventually hit the ground, the people on the belows having no idea where the body came from. 

Miguel swallows heavily, and winces when something sharp pierces his bottom lip, his own blood now filling his mouth. He sits back, body shaking from the events, to look at the talons on his fingertips, to poke at a fang too long and too sharp in his mouth. 

This wasn't real. This was all just a dream. A bad one, and if he got home he'd awaken from this nightmare of a daydream and return to his regular, horrible life. He'd deal with his parents, help Gabriel get ready for the night, and the drop unconscious on his mattress and wake four hours later to get ready for his and Gabriel’s separate school days. 

Yeah. He just had to get home. 

His first priority, however, is to find some kind of clothes. He wasn't entirely sure why he was naked, since none of what happened was real, but maybe he'd just blacked out and lost his clothes. He blacked out sometimes from exhaustion, that was a regular thing(though his blackouts normally didn't have life like nightmares where he is transformed into a monster a man kills himself to get away from). 

He finds clothes that mostly fit him hanging nearby- probably an old subject’s things- and slips it all on, hurrying from the room. He tries to remember how he ended up here- oh yeah, Delgado had asked for him from his class for help. He was the top of his class in genetics, and Delgado was wanting a fresh look on something to do with genetics. 

“I'm being rushed by Stone to get this finished soon, Michael,” Delgado had said, using the name Miguel despises. A lot of the old, white men(including Tyler Stone. bastard) in the higher up rankings of Alchemex always seemed to refer to him as Michael, as though his actual name Miguel was too difficult for them. “And I was hoping a younger, fresher look on my works would help!” 

He'd taken Miguel all the way to the top of Alchemex’s main tower, and showed him the machine he'd been working on. Instantly, Miguel had seen the things wrong with it and set to work without a word. Things had been going fine, until the entrance had shut and everything had gone to shit. 

But that last part didn't matter- none of it was real. Delgado had probably turned in around twenty minutes into Miguel working and Miguel had then hallucinated everything else. Because that made sense(it didn't, but he was grasping at straws at this point). 

Stumbling into his family’s higher end apartment like he was drunk probably wasn't a good thing(all alcohol was outlawed, aside from wine, and only the higher ups could drink that. miguel wasn't officially a higher up yet). But his parents were nowhere in sight. They must have gone to sleep early. That helps Miguel relax minisculely. If they'd gone to sleep early, then Miguel wouldn't have to deal with them and Gabriel would be okay. 

He finds Gabriel waiting for him in the kitchen. His baby brother perks up as soon as he stumbles in, and hops to his feet when he sees his older brother unsteady on his feet. “Miggy?” Gabri stuttered, sounding afraid for his brother. Or maybe of him. Which wouldn't make sense, since Miguel was just looking a little drunk. “Are- are you okay? You were gone for a long time.”

Miguel grumbles something out, his too large fangs cutting slices into his cheeks and tongue and lips, and he was almost choking on his own blood. “Have you eaten?” he asked Gabriel, and Gabriel winces at his words. Why didn't he sound right? He already didn't feel right. 

Gabriel shakes his head jerkily. “N-no,” he replied quietly, watching Miguel hobble to the pantry to grab something for him. “But- but Miggy. You don't look good. I'm not hungry. Go to bed.” 

And isn't that funny that Gabriel was trying to take care of Miguel now? His baby brother often tried to do that- tried to act like he was the older brother. Even though Miguel knows by now that that is a bad thing for Gabriel to do- his father beat it into him enough times that there is a set in stone family dynamic that everyone has to follow. Gabriel doesn't know it as well, since Miguel doesn't let their father near him. But he doesn't need to know it. Miguel can handle it for the both of them. 

“You need to eat,” Miguel slurred, and he could see droplets of red spraying from his mouth and onto the counter, staining the top of it. His mother wouldn't be happy about that. Well, he wasn't actually bleeding, so it was fine. She wouldn't have anything to get mad about because he wasn't bleeding and getting blood everywhere. “I can sleep… later.” 

Gabriel is standing beside him as he opens a bag of bread, the plastic getting shredded by the talons on his fingers. He watches dumbly as the bag falls apart and bread rains onto the floor, effectively ruining it. “How did that happen?” he muttered, because the talons aren't real so the bag shouldn't have been shredded in actuality. Or maybe the bag being shredded and the bread falling out was apart of the hallucination, and the bread was still in the intact bag(the bag felt effectively shredded, though, which Miguel’s exhausted, pain addled brain couldn't comprehend). 

“What… what happened to you?” Gabriel asked, his voice hushed, his words coming out in a single, strained breath. He sounded and looked tense, eyes wide as he stared at his brother. Which was weird, because the only thing different about Miguel was the clothes he was wearing, which sure was strange but not that weird. “Miggy, I think you should really lay down.”

“After I make you a sandwich!” Miguel snapped, and the teeth in his mouth clicked sharply together, like he was some kind of animal or arachnid threatening its young. Gabriel winces and falls silent, nodding slowly. A pleased rumble sounds from Miguel’s chest as his brother finally listens to reason and lets him get to work. He finds two pieces of bread on the counter and decides to work with those, though the fake talons cut them up(but because they were fake he couldn't have sliced the bread up so he continues on like he hadn't just shredded the two pieces into ribbons) and grabs the needed ingredients to make Gabri’s favorite kind of sandwich. 

It doesn't take him long to shred the rest of the ingredients along with the bread, and he ends up staring uselessly at a pile of ribbons of food. Gabriel is watching him quietly, and it slowly begins to sink in for Miguel that- that this was very, very, possibly reality, and not a hallucination. 

He looks to Gabriel, his stinging eyes wide with his confusion and pain. “This- this is real, isn't it?” he asked, very slowly. And Gabriel’s lips thin into a tight line as he hesitantly nods. Miguel looks down at his taloned fingertips, swipes one of the fangs in his mouth with his tongue, and very, very responsibly proceeds to pass out. Not before he mutters, “Sorry about your sandwich.”

**Author's Note:**

> let's see how this goes. 
> 
> i liek comments more than kudos so if anyone reads this and likes it pls comment so i know i'm not alone ;3;


End file.
